In the unfair world of MMA, even valid complaints offer little comfort

In the unfair world of MMA, even valid complaints offer little comfort There are two kinds of post-fight complaints in the sport of MMA: the totally ridiculous kind that will get you nowhere, and the actually pretty legitimate kind that will also get you nowhere.

This is important. This is something you want to consider if you’re a fighter (or, more commonly, a fighter’s coach/manager/lawyer) and you think you were wronged by a referee or athletic commission. In the vast majority of cases, whether you’re complaining after the fact about illegal blows or timekeeper errors or widespread institutional incompetence, even if you’re right, it won’t matter. That’s just how it works in MMA. And yeah, that sucks.

Consider a couple recent examples that illustrate this point perfectly. Go check out the Jackson-Winkeljohn MMA Facebook page, and you’ll see a post all about how Andrei Arlovski was wronged by an inept timekeeper in his World Series of Fighting bout with Anthony Johnson on March 23. According to Jackson’s crew, the first round went on about eight seconds too long, and Johnson landed “a devastating blow” as a result.

Go watch the video, and get out your stopwatch (or, you know, pull up the stopwatch feature on your phone), and you’ll see that they’re right. The first round in that fight lasts five minutes and eight seconds. Seriously, time it yourself.

At the five-minute mark, when the bell should have sounded, Arlovski and Johnson both miss with simultaneous right hands. Ding, ding, ding goes the bell in a perfect/well-regulated world. Both fighters go back to their respective corners after a close, and not particularly action-packed round. But no, that’s not what happens. In the very next instant Johnson lands a right hand that temporarily drops Arlovski. Then he lands another when Arlovski bounces back to his feet. Then a couple more as Arlovski turtles up.

Then we hear the bell. Eight seconds (and, for the sake of Arlovski’s jaw, several right hands) too late.

That’s a legitimate gripe from Arlovski’s team. We don’t know how the fight would have turned out if the bell had rung on time, and obviously it’s Arlovski’s responsibility to defend himself until the ref tells him he can stop, but the fact remains that something that should not have happened did happen. It probably changed the course of the fight, not to mention the course of Arlovski’s dental records. Valid point by the crew at Jackson’s, even if bringing it up will probably benefit them not at all.

It’s a similar story with the weigh-in controversy surrounding UFC 158 in Montreal. Nick Diaz’s camp highlighted some shady shenanigans by the Quebec commission, which has yet to provide a sensible explanation that doesn’t contradict its own rules and past practices. The Diaz team even provided video of a UFC executive explaining the “off-the-record” weigh-in rule change, only to have that video taken down after the UFC used a specious copyright claim to get it pulled from YouTube. (Sidenote: Nothing says “totally innocent of any wrongdoing” like trying to destroy the evidence.)

Diaz’s team is right to complain about this. It’s still unclear whether Georges St-Pierre even made use of the excess weight allowance, but it doesn’t change the fact that the commission didn’t follow its own rules. Too bad it doesn’t do the Diaz camp any good to have brought it to our attention.

This isn’t anything new in MMA. From minor infractions (think groin shots and fence grabs and eye pokes) to major screw-ups (c’mon timekeeper, you’ve got one job to do!), this sport almost always favors the rule-breaker and not the rule-breakee. As my podcast co-host Chad Dundas once wrote, this is why you should always cheat in MMA.

But even when we recognize that the rules have been broken, whether by a fighter or a commission or a referee, there’s almost never any upside to pointing it out. You just get labeled a whiner and complainer and manufacturer of excuses. For a sport that has so many ways of subverting the rules, we sure have a low tolerance for those who claim to be victims of poor officiating. Why is that, anyway?

Maybe it has something to do with the split-second decision-making inherent in pro fighting. Because this is that rare sport where the contest can end at any time, and because refs don’t often get the luxury of pausing the action in order to ensure they’ve made the right call, the demands of mid-fight momentum encourage us to ignore rule violations whenever possible.

There’s also this weird relationship between cause and effect in MMA. The outcome of any fight is the result of so many different factors that sometimes it feels useless to try to pinpoint one that’s more important than any other. As long as we can reasonably claim that the outcome was not clearly and immediately altered, we can ignore it.

So you got hit in the back of the head when you were woozy? Well, you were going to get knocked out anyway. So the other guy got a little Vaseline on his chest? He was already smashing you without it. So the dude grabbed your shorts and/or the fence to avoid a takedown? It’s still your own fault for getting knocked out a few seconds later.

That’s how it goes in this sport. And, since none of us wants to live in a world where wins are constantly being changed to no-contests and disqualifications reach a pro wrestling-esque frequency, we accept that. It seems better than trying to go back after the fight and pulling at all the little threads until the whole thing unravels.

The sport is unfair. Your opponent will paw at your eyes, and the timekeeper will space out, and the commission will violate its own rules, and if you complain about any of it, you will be criticized for being a complainer. It will not matter that you have a valid point. It will not put money in your bank account or un-break your jaw. It will not even earn you much sympathy.

Your only hope is that every once in a while it will be the other guy who gets screwed. Maybe in the end you’ll benefit from it at least as much as you suffered because of it. Then again, maybe not.